Resentment
While I am not sure how direct the link is between alcohol consumption itself and resentments, I do think that resentment can eat at people and make their world and experience smaller. Here is my story about this:
I was sexually abused by a stranger (male) right before I started drinking and think that those two things are directly linked. I have been sexually abused/assaulted numerous other times while drinking and while sober (there is this strange thing that once you are a victim of abuse once you have a much higher propensity to have it happen to you again). So basically I grew up socialized to men sexually in the worst way. I could make a huge list of horrible things that not one man did to me, not two, but tens, maybe even one hundred. This is how I grew up. So while I am completely cool with men as friends, I have major issues when it comes to men as boyfriends or men as sexual partners. Until very recently, and even now it still lingers, I hated men. I distrust them completely. I had feelings that they ruined my life, maybe made me a drinker even, that they had raised my defenses to be so psycho-ly high, that I was never going to be able to be in a normal relationship with a man. These weren't necessarily thoughts that would coarse through my brain all day but they were there on the back burner, in my actions and reactions, when men would approach me, when men in the street would holler and I would grow inflamed, etc.
Then I read some of my books on the 12-steps (FYI I'm not an AA member). Step 4 really struck me. I am not sure where I was reading this exactly, probably some woman's book about the 12-steps, but it was describing it in terms of resentments. And I started thinking and realizing how much hate I was harboring, not only towards the men that had hurt me but to all potential sexual male partners, to all men. I had a lot of hate, a lot of anger. So many times before I had felt this indignation, like why should they be let off the hook for having treated me like they have? I mean it wasn't just one it has been many and no one has made up for these mistreatments. But then as I was thinking and feeling more and more, I realized that all of these feelings weren't doing sh*t to these men but were doing a hell of a lot of not good things to me. It was keeping me from good men. It was keeping me from healing, from dealing. It was keeping me in this little anger shell, wallowing in all that had happened. It was keeping me from moving on. I don't know if it was keeping me drinking but that really doesn't matter because it was keeping me unhappy and stagnant.
But resentments are hard to let go off especially when you have learned them almost as survival strategies. I saw it so differently though. I mean the thing is think about how your hostility is affecting those you are hostile towards— not much. But how is it affecting you? A lot, and probably more negatively than positively.